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Trantor
]] 2008]] History Timeline * 1972 - concept thought up by Stuart Taylor * 1973 - Prototype built in ten-shillings a week garage in Withington,Manchester. * 1976 - Launched at Royal Show * 1978 - First models sold * 1983 - Series 2 introduced * 1986 - 5-off, 4-WDrive Series 2 Trantors built in Sandbach Works * 1987 - UK production ceased when many of UKs component suppliers went out of business, mostly from the Birmingham area. * 1991 - design & development work for use in all or most countries of world has since been undertaken. * 1999 - work conducted with GAJRA gears of Dewas, MP enabled the company to create its Indian Supply chain & one which began with TATA-components originally designed by Mercedes-Benz. 3-prototypes were built. * 2004 HMT Ltd. - Agreement to build 10 x Pre-production 65 hp examples with assistance from UK design team. * Present - development work ongoing in uk to develop Higher Hp models. The Beginning The design was conceived by Stuart Taylor and Graham Edwards who formed a firm to develop the idea in 1972. A prototype was built in 1973. It was bought by Tiny Rowland`s Lonrho company & went to Nigeria. Lonrho then purchased the next 20 revised prototypes and sold them Trantor`s African Licensee to South Africa, Zambia, Nigeria & Malaysia for evaluation and use by farmers, cooperatives and public authorities. McConnel of Ludlow helped build a few Trantors for Stuart Taylor before Eva Industries PLC purchased the UK rights for the Series ONE Trantor tractors. Taylor`s company re-purchased the rights from EVA and he set up his own assembly operations for his new Series 2 Trantors in Sandbach, Cheshire. The Series 2 Trantors were different to the SERIES I Trantors. After testing and development the first Series 2 models were built and sold in UK, Luxembourg, & Yemen, after being shown at the Smithfield Show in 1984. The name was derived from the original title of "TRANsport TracTOR", which became TRANTOR . The Trantor Series 2 was introduced to address some of the issues of customer use and manufacturing system that were found with the early machines. Options of alternative engines from 72hp to 128hp were produced at Sandbach. The Trantors were 2 & 4WDrive and fitted with an air-braking system which allowed the operation of high speed trailers on the highway, at the legal speed in UK of 50MPH 80KPH The idea was considered by many to be ahead of its time whereas the Fastrac Range was designed primarily to conduct heavy draught work, e.g sub-soiling & ploughing & therefore entered the market of conventional but slower farm tractors. The Trantor tractor is a transport and low-draught farm tractor, which is a completely different concept. It was a product designed carefully & precisely for a range of new, niche markets. The JCB Fastrac uses the Trantor-style rear suspension which was the subject of two patents which the Trantor team passed to JCB Ltd.....who then found a way NOT to infringe the patents. The Trantor tractor was a hi-speed tractor built in Manchester. It was originally designed by Stuart Taylor a research student at Manchester University. They were built from 1978 till 1987 in Lancashire (Series One) & Cheshire (Series Two). They are no longer being built in India by (HMT) but there is now an Indian supply-chain which enables Trantor International Ltd., to assemble the 2 & 4 Wheel Drive Trantors elsewhere and the work of design (in UK) continues but in a much higher HP range of categories from 90hp Tata engine to a 180 HP Trantor Javelin specification which is a Series 3 model range to 128 -135 hp and Javelin range above 135hp. The Idea was to create a new concept of tractor for the transport-duties on farms & to create a low-draught focused specification which was MUCH more efficient Speedy & with much reduced fuel consumption than the convention but also one that could be useful to most, if not all, power take-off PTO work tasks. It was and still is a farm tractor that is ahead of its time & considered by many to be so!!, The much later JCB Fastrac Range of heavy tractors was a WHOLLY different product concept. The Fastrac was designed and developed to compete head to head with John Deere, Claas, Fiat & Agco farm tractors, whereas the Trantor tractor was carefully designed to work ALONGSIDE the 33 million conventional tractors used each day in the new globalised world of farm machinery. The Trantor was and is able to conduct shallow-ploughing but its design was directed towards those farm duties that the conventional farm tractor is NOT efficient at doing. Whilst the Fastrac fitted in to the conventional wisdom of farmers who wished to plough & conduct heavy cultivation, the Trantor tractor was primarily designed to work, much more speedily & safely, with the UK-style of farm trailers but also work more efficiently on lower draught & PTO-work tasks. Clearly, the JCB experience since launching the Fastrac has been more easily accepted in the market place. The Trantor tractor, however, is much more a global-market concept aimed towards moving the 7000 million tonnes of crops from field to fork. It is also a concept that includes many of the desirable features of the Land-Rover/Land Cruiser pick-up truck as its weight, safety, speed & comfort is vehicle-related rather than tractor-related. The Fastrac is NOT light in weight and is NOT designed to carry people farming villages in the cabin & on the load platform & tailgate. The concepts are very different to each other and both are different to the Unimog, the Mercedes-Benz farming-focused specifications. PDF -brochure F, "3 Different farm tractor concepts" [www.trantortractors.co.uk. The Trantor tractor concept has found over 500 customers in 15 countries whereas the Fastrac has been more popular and has behind it a successful manufacturing business.The Trantor idea is reasonably well known but not so popular in the UK., partly because its design is more relevant to a wider range of farming countries. Many conventional farm tractor manufacturers now offer 40 kph & 50 KPH versions of the conventional, skid-unit-focused farm tractors despite the FACT that, in France and UK the legislation does NOT permit such speeds. Because of the design of UNIMOG, TRANTOR & FASTRAC these special & different tractors are permitted, in UK & Germany, for example, to travel at 80KPH MPH. In the Trantor's case there are 4 different suspension systems but Unimog has only two. The Fastrac has a suspension arrangement that is very similar indeed to the patents taken out by W.S.H.Taylor, the originator of the fully -suspended farm tractor. By 2004, HMT Ltd., had constructed & sold about 400,000 tractors designed by Zetor & they entered into an agreement which enabled them to make only 10 numbers of a 65 H.P.Trantor specification, with the assistance of the UK-based Trantor design & manufacturing team. Serious working capital shortages had caused HMT to reduce their volume of tractors from their break-even level of 12000 per annum to a level nearer to 4000 per annum. In such a climate of Crores of losses, from this government-owned tractor factory, the problem of paying the UK firm for that stated in the contract was the last thing that made Indian sense to the public sector managers concerned. The prime reason why the Trantor team were interested in India was because the British supply-chain had to be closed as one automotive supplier after another closed down in the 1985-1995 period. The work in India with Gajra Gears been very useful to learn about the quality & cost of Indian automotive components. This family firm was as important to the Trantor project as that of Tiny Rowland`s Lonrho but in a different way. Ramesh Gajra helped our engineers understand the Indian automotive sector & ACMA in particular. When the Trantor design & manufacturing team went to work on building the 10 Trantors at HMT, they had ten years of experience of the Indian automotive sector, its variable quality, its low costs and the fact that India is and was determined to be a manufacturing nation and unlike UK wished to be efficient in automotive component manufacturing and the wide variety that UK had known since the second world war and up to the 70`s and part of 80`s. Because Trantor`s key decision-makers were determined to create a farm tractor for worldwide farm efficiency, there were three critical factors. "getting the product design and range right", "assembling the product in a variety of countries where a significant volume market exists" And "all or most of the sophisticated automotive componentry would come from a nation that would be a quality automotive component supplier in 2030" Long term planning is essential for private companies, as Germany has demonstrated. The Trantor concept is part of the future in worldwide farming and these mere trials & tribulations are simply a part of the learning process in what is becoming a changed world. Watch this space" The Competition IT SHOULD BE REALISED THAT THERE IS NO DIRECT COMPETITION FOR THE TRANTOR,THE UNIMOG OR THE FASTRAC. THIS NEEDS TO BE UNDERSTOOD they are 3 different farm tractor concepts and the Unimog is also a well-known military vehicle. The best known high speed tractors capable of being operated legally at 50MPH are the Unimog Mercedes-Benz, Fastrac & The Trantor tractor. Other major manufacturers such as Fendt, & Co./John Deere, Ferguson, Valtra do NOT offer High speed versions of any tractors. The speed limit for these ploughing-first tractors is a slow one because they do not have the specification necessary to be legal at normal truck road speeds.They are low-specification, poorly-braked and do not have the four suspension systems that the 80KPH Trantor has, for example. The 65 KPH Fastrac has a specification that meets the legal requirements of most EC countries. Conventional tractors are all based on a design which has a skid unit rather than a chassis & so the suspension is only on the seats & on some front axles. The gearing & transmission systems of Trantors & Fastracs and Unimogs are designed for MUCH faster, legal speeds than the conventional ploughers. Trantor tractors originated the Hi-speed tractor and did so by creating suspension systems & braking systems which use an air-compressor so that the Trantor could pull trailers on the road at speed. THIS SPEED WAS NOT REGULATED BY THE STANDARDS OF TRACTORS BUT TO THE SAME STANDARD AS TRUCKS. The Unimog was also designed for safety and speed but the kind of trailers pulled in Germany are balanced wheras in UK, Africa, France etc etc they are unbalanced and therefore the trailer drawbar imposes a load on the tractor especially when there is a load on the trailer drawbar (when the trailer is loaded]. The intelligent design of W.S.H.Taylor created a similar invention to that of Harry Ferguson. Whereas Harry borrowed the weight from the plough onto the 3-point linkage, Stuart borrowed the weight of the trailer to the drawbar of the tractor and suspended the Hitch linkage.... and therefore created a new kind of tractor (with trailer-pulling as its main duty). The Fastrac is known to have something very similar and was created after JCB farms bought 2 Trantors, examined the Unimog & MB Trac & created a farm tractor like all others Trantor & Unimog, which had the orientation of "having to be good at ploughing". and therefore to have lots of traction. The Trantor is something else and is a farm transport tractor for pulling trailer & conducting ALL low-draught farming duties at speeds in excess of the convention.....in-field & out of fields. The Trantor is unique as can be seen on the www.trantortractors.co.uk website. Model range ;Original UK models * Trantor Series One - 1978-83 - 72hp and 80hp and 60mph (80KPH) legally in UK, as for the Unimog from Mercedes-Benz * Trantor Series Two - 1983-87 - 96hp Leyland engine in turbo-form & 126-HP Perkins engine ;The Development of a Worldwide product range for the global market. * Trantor Series Three - 1987-2010 - 90hp turbo charged 2 & 4 Wheel-Drive for Livestock, Dairy and No-till Farming * Trantor Series Three - 1987-2010 - 128 HP No-till & transport tractor. * Trantor Series Three (Javelin) 140-185 2 Wheel-Drive for No-till farmers. Preserved examples Several have been seen at steam fairs and tractor shows, mainly used to haul other exhibits. (see Photos on the Right for examples). * - 1981 - MkI Photo here * - A well restored Series I at Astwood Bank Vintage show (Fullcab) * - Professionally restored MkI in Lancashire.http://www.bjtractors.co.uk/html/trantorMk1.html# * - 1983 TRANTOR Mk.II 4cylinder diesel sold at Cheffins (Bristol 2008)http://www.cheffins.co.uk/lot/-21261-vintage-0 * - Series 2 At Cromford Steam Rally * - (The Red Trantor in photo on the left) seen at Great Dorset Steam Fair 2008 & 2010 * - 1984 - MkII owned by A. Collins, in NI. (ex Water board machine)see references no.1 Gallery Add your trantor photos here please; File:Trantor,_Mansells_Farm_near_Codicote_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1342534.jpg|TBC 189X listed above Image:Image needed.png|Replace with your image Image:Image needed.png|Caption here The paper published by ARAI,India has a powerpoint presentation containing over 80 photographs.The presentation concerns the developments in farm vehicles from the early land-rovers & the unimog just after the 2nd world war.www.lr-mad.co.uk has a copy of the published paper on its web.There is an archivist at trantor tractors Mrs who has a wide collection of photographs of Trantors including the prototypes..com.She is contactable as she provides an information service for Trantor owners.......hope this helpa WIKI.] See also ; Related articles * HMT Indian tractor manufacturer. * JCB Fastrac * Unimog(Mercedes-Benz) * Special Purpose farm tractors & farm vehicles. ** The Agrover designed & developed by S.J.Castellani.http://www.lr-mad.co.uk] Land Rover enthusiasts site ** The UNITRAC from Lindner of Austria ** The TURKAR from Hisarlar of Turkey ** The Stonefield vehicle from Scotland - ? Archive *** The Stonefield-related Indian vehicle from Hindustan, Bangalore. References * Tractor & Machinery, 60MPH Marvel-Trantor, the world`s first hi-speed farm tractor G.Connolly Feb 2007 Vol 13 number 3 * Vintage Tractor & Countryside Heritage, Issue 139, December 2011 pages 48-51 * Landwards, Volume 55, No 3 Autumn (2000), Institute Agricultural Engineers (UK) * Vaporising, volume XXVIIl (part1&2) Summer & Autumn.... National Vintage Tractor and Engine Club, UK (2000) * Recent Developments in Tractor Design D.Crolla, Japanese Society of Agricultural Engineers, Hokkaido, 1990. * Die Alternative tractor, Profis magazine in German (June 2003) in English November 2003. Tractor & Machinery Magazine,The Phoenix Phenomenon April 2007 Page 40-44 by the acclaimed author Michael Williams. * Meet the Trantor, Power Farming April 1978. Lucas * Our Tribute to Trantor tractors Roberts, The first real hi-speed tractor, Classic Tractor Magazine, November 20025pages December 2002pages * Innovation in the Tractor World..who leads, who follows? ASAE, Chicago, USA conference paper (2002) * A new 50MPH tractor solves Hill Problems, British Farmer & Stockbreeder [ Archive] External links * www.trantortractors.com Official web site * HMT Trantor HMT web site * www.lr-mad.co.uk Land Rover enthusiast site with section on Trantor & photos Category:Companies of the United Kingdom Category:Trantor Category:Former tractor manufacturers Category:Tractor manufacturers Category:Inventions Category:Highspeed tractors Category:Tractors built in India Category:Tractors built in Britain